Re: needs and desireS

["Roland Chrisjohn, Ph. D." <rchrisjo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings All:

I've just seen the comments by Kevin Robert Dean and Doyle Saylor on
Marxian Psychology.  As a psychologist (I mentioned in the first
Rushton-go-round that he had been on my doctoral committee) I have long
been concerned with the inadequacy of contemporary psychological approaches
to deal substantively with modern issues (the piece Lou published recently,
Michael Parenti's critique, is a good introduction to the problems).  As a
member of a bureaucratically-created group (indigenous North American) that
is constantly found to have characteristic inadequacies that account for
our current conditions (we're "born drunks," have "right brains" rather
than "whole brains," and have a "gene for suicide," etc.), I went looking
for a manner of approaching the issues that didn't invariably reduce to
some form of blaming the victim.  Marx's notion of alienation/estrangement,
as detailed in the "Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844," was
a giant step in the right direction in my opinion.

Some minor points, however.  I don't think Marx was starting from
psychology, but from the material world.  The reaction of individuals to
their material circumstances was based upon the fact that workers did not
own what they produced, and because of this estrangement, other forms of
alienation from their material circumstances had to come about (for
example, workers alienated from other workers, workers alienated from the
natural environment, etc.).  The "emotional" or subjective reactions to
objective alienation could, literally, be anything (just as some people can
resent oppression, or resist it, or try to ignore it, or learn to "suck up"
to it, etc., and feel almost anything "personally" about their
behavior).  The definition of alienation Marx started from was,
fundamentally, close to Dean's #4.

I've personally been pursuing a project of taking Marx's work on alienation
as central to a materialist psychology (something I haven't been able to
interest mainstream idealist psychologists in).  Psychology comes out much
differently through Marx's lens.  And, since psychology is a weapon that is
consistently used to depoliticize the political, taking down idealist
psychology and putting up something else in it's place could well have its
uses.

Some reading:

        Isidor Wallimann, "Estrangement: Marx's Conception of Human Nature and 
the
Division of Labor."  Greenwood Press, 1981.

        Adam Schaff, "Alienation as a Social Phenomenon."  Pergammon Press, 
1980.

        Istvan Meszaros, "Marx's Theory of Alienation."  London, 1970.

        Bertell Ollman, "Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist
Society, 2nd Ed."  Cambridge U. Press, 1972.

        Peter Leonard, "Personality and Ideology: Towards a Materialist
Understanding of the Individual."  Macmillan, 1984.

I consider Wallimann the best overall exlication.  Anything by Schacht is
to be avoided.

R. Chrisjohn